As you may or may not have heard, depending on how many musical theatre nerds you know, the 2014 Tony Awards happened last night. Hosted by Wolverine, er, Hugh Jackman, the evening’s highlights included Jackman, LL Cool J, and T.I. performing a rap version of “Rock Island” from The Music Man; Audra McDonald winning her sixth Tony to become the first person to win in four different acting categories; Neil Patrick Harris unsurprisingly winning Best Actor in a Leading Role for Hedwig and the Angry Inch; and Carole King joining her fictionalized younger self from Beautiful onstage.
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There was a lot of television to choose from last night: a beauty pageant, a big battle on Game of Thrones, and even, I’m told, some basketball game. But if you’re like me, you enjoyed a liter of white wine and the Tony Awards, the annual celebration of a relatively minor industry within New York that is broadcast on national television to millions who will likely never see any of the shows featured or even know who most of the people in attendance actually are. But, on the plus side, Broadway for once looked a lot less whitewashed than usual!
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If you find yourself asking, “Where is Ja Rule?” as often I do, you might be pleased to know he’s got a new movie out called I’m in Love With a Church Girl (it’s about exactly what you think). But wait! There’s more! During a recent interview with SiriusXM’s Food Talk, Ja revealed he’s interested in writing a microwave cookbook. Apparently, two years in prison did wonders for his microwaving technique, and this got me thinking about all the other weird side projects rappers have taken on in recent years. Click through to learn about some of hip hop stars’ most unexpected pastimes.
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It’s Father’s Day on Sunday, which means there’ll be much breaking out of Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” and Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us” across the Internet. Since you’ll surely be getting your dose of sentimentality elsewhere, here are handful of significantly less wholesome songs about fathers. There are plenty that spring to mind (although the, ahem, daddy of the lot — Korn’s “Daddy” — turns out to not in fact be about Jonathan Davis’s father at all, hence its absence from this list). But still, there are plenty of other candidates, and all of them are better than anything that involves Will Smith. Here goes.
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By now we’ve all marveled at Brad Paisley and LL Cool J’s “Accidental Racist.” But as we were considering the song yesterday, we got to thinking about the fact that pretty much every report about it has described Paisley and LL as an “unlikely duo,” an “odd couple,” or something along those lines. At first glance, of course, they are — a white southern country star and a black MC from New York. But then again, maybe not, because their respective genres have lot more in common than perhaps either realizes. Both sounds started off as the voice of a social class without a voice in mainstream culture, and have been subsequently commercialized, glitizfied, and sold back to that same demographic as an aspirational consumerist ideal. Happy days.
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Crockett and Tubbs had style. David and Maddie were explosive. And it was all about subtext when it came to Mulder and Scully. TV has seen a number of crime-fighting duos in its years, and the ones we remember most always had that certain “It” factor. On-screen chemistry — and we’re not speaking strictly in the romantic sense — is hard to come by, and lucky for us, there’s no shortage of it at the moment in the buddy cop/taking down evil rich people and terrorists field. In anticipation of Sunday’s Revenge and Homeland season premieres, we’ve decided to rank our favorite crime-fighting duos on TV, from “hotter than Bon Temps on a mild summer day” to “sexier than Inigo Montoya.” Is there a special couple we missed? Let us know!
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1. A failed actor tried to extort millions of dollars from a group of people that included Harvey Weinstein, sending him a letter that threatened to kill members of the film mogul’s family unless “a large sum of money was wired to an offshore bank account.” And get this: for some reason, he used Helen… Read More

Everyone loves celebrity conflict, which is why we’re assuming our post a couple of weeks back on actor/filmmaker feuds generated such a huge response. It’s humanizing to see that cultural icons squabble about the same petty stuff that we do in the workplace. Performers and auteurs aren’t the only source of on-set friction however; the Hollywood history books are filled with cases of co-stars going after each other with everything they’ve got. After the jump, you’ll find a few of the most famed examples.
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We’ve seen a ton of indie/rock album covers get the redesign treatment, but it feels like the hip hop world hasn’t been made over quite as much. We first spotted Jeff Rochester’s collection of iconic hip hop album covers reimagined over at Voices of East Anglia. The designer has given several classic groups a new face, including De La Soul’s Three Feet and Rising, albums by Madlib and LL Cool J. MF Doom’s redesign is impressive — and works, because he literally dropped bombs on that album — but we prefer the original. It’s hard to beat the hilarity of a B-boy Dr. Doom holding a mic and wearing a hoodie with fat gold chains as the drawstrings. The new artwork for Jeru’s The Sun Rises in the East is far better than the original, making it less obvious and a great compliment to the MC’s smart rhyme style. The Wu-Tang redo evokes the old kung fu film aesthetic that colored that album much more effectively than the original cover. Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid in Full has us torn. When the album dropped, most had no idea what the duo looked like so it was cool for people to finally see their faces — particularly with Rakim’s unique voice. See all the albums and decide for yourself in our gallery after the jump.
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